he says republicans don't have a clue, and that austerity is not the answer. he says it is time to educate our children and rebuild our infrastructure. the president's fourth state of the union. how do we pay the bill? >> nothing i am proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime. >> the president offered more of the same -- higher taxes and more stimulus spending. >> the president wants congress to come up with $40 billion to improve infrastructure, wants to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour, wants a new energy bill similar to cap-and-trade, wants preschool for every 4-year-old in the nation, tax reform, gun control, citizenship for undocumented immigrants. what are his chances, charles? >> approximately zero. he is talking as if we have a huge surplus so we can start spending all over again inaugural address was the

philosophical statement of what i call this left-liberalism, the state of the union address is the programmatic expression of that. there a social ill that he did not have the government answer to? if he did, i did not hear it. >> mark? >> if that is a liberal agenda, we have moved the goal posts in our country. i thought the speech was -- the sum of its parts did not create a greater whole. i thought that parts of it were really good. like the minimum wage, i like the education, i like the training, i particularly like the gun -- at the end. richarde wasn't come in nixon's turn, the lift of a driving dream. >> colby? >> i don't think it was supposed to be that kind of address. i think he laid out an agenda,

and agenda he wants to pursue. i think he will achieve some of it. something will happen with immigration reform, i believe. i think he will get something on guns. there is a movement and he hit it just right with the tone. minimum wage will be the traditional fight. he was right to lay out the agenda he wants. he will get very little support from republicans. >> nina, on a scale from a to f, how would you rate the speech? >> b +. although there was a surgeon laundry-list element to the speech, which there is to every state of the union, in the end it ended on a high note and passionate note about guns, and there was an overall tone which was center-left but reasonable.

he did not come off looking silly and sort of way over the top. it was a far more restrained speech and then you would think he would get from a "liberal liberal." >> charle centss -- charles says that the chances of achieving this stuff is 0. >> chance evoked giving all of it -- >> 20%? minimum wage, can he do that? >> the longest suicide note in the world is being written by republicans if they don't support immigration. it they don't advance their position on it, they are drinking and the potion that will make them disappear. president absolutely has a good chance of that. his chances on gun control improved. i.t. tak -- things he can make

the case for the minimum wage, at a time when the growth went to the top 1% of the country. >> colby, every time in the past years i have been in washington there has been talk of raising the minimum wage, we hear people say we cannot afford it, it will destroy small business. >> that is the traditional argument. those arguments don't hold up. give me an example where the increase in the minimum wage has stymied the economy, caused jobs to be lost, caused employers not to hire. where is the evidence of that? >> if that is the case, let's make it $20, $50. we not only have chronic unemployment of 8%, we have huge and terribly destructive teenage unemployment, minority unemployment. this is the entry-level jobs where you get started. if you are going to price it out of the market in an economy that

has the weakest recovery since the second world war, you are guaranteeing you will create blight for these people. >> those other people who do the jobs that none of us want to do. i think the odds are that he will not get it and he will not fight for it that hard. the last person who fought for a minimum-wage increase was ted kennedy and he actually got it. >> who will be the time kennedy in the senate is an interesting question, too. >> if you cannot pay someone $9 an hour, you probably should not be a business. >> i agree with him -- >> you talk about the economy as if it is a moral and estimate. even if i agree with you, it does not change the fact that it will hurt young people and immigrants, a lot of whom are low-skilled, you are guaranteeing them the low end of the scale and will hurt the chances of young, less skilled

people getting jobs. it is an economic fact. it may not be just, but it is true. >> is what i am asking -- where is the evidence of that having happened -- >> why don't you make it $15? >> but you are making the argument -- >> if you are saying it has no effect on employment -- >> obviously it has an effect! the question is, are you going to ask people to work 40 hours a week and be below the poverty level? i don't think that is a just country. the economy is not something that exists in itself. it has to provide justice as well as prosperity. >> i understand that, but if you really want to help the people you want to help, you don't take away jobs. what you do is you grow the economy, you get above the 2% anemic rate of growth obama had

given us, you get 3%. it is how you help these young people. >> that means passing some of the infrastructure programs that will create jobs -- because >> only government creates jobs? >> is anybody here think he will get a $9 an hour? >> government spending on infrastructure is that cure of unemployment, then why did the largest stimulus in galactic history, we have 8% unemployment? >> the latest studies -- >> let me interrupt your interruption. >> the tax increases and if it i the dead -- as the spending he proposed will hurt middle- class families, will cost them their raises and benefits and may even cause some of them their jobs. mr. president, i don't oppose the plans because i want to protect the rich.

i oppose your plans because i want to protect my neighbors. >> all right, teacher, how would you agree that one? >> c-. but it is not his fault entirely. i read somewhere that somebody said he should have called a leadership that i before and said, "i am dreadfully ill." nobody wins who does these speeches, nobody. they cannot be done well. they have been tried every way imaginable. only person who did 1 well was fred thompson, and look what happened to him. >> he made a lot of good movies. >> is is not doable. this was done, not well. you had your guy up there and he is sweating profusely, you have a shot of him that made him look like a blimp. he is reaching for his water somewhere out of the shot, and he gives a speech that sounds like mitt romney except for his background.

>> the other night notwithstanding, this fellow is headed for stardom, no question about that. >> there is after the other night. this is a fellow who is a brilliant messenger, and he had a message that was so fact was, that all the problems can be solved by cutting the tax burden that donald trump labors under pit goldman sachs just past to be relieved of regulation. it was so bad, it was so bad, he made barack obama look like cicero and churchville rolled into one -- churchill rolled into one. it was a mediocre address. i disagree with nina on one point. there acted 106 rebuttals. three of those people have gone on to occupy the white house. >> that doesn't mean they tidwell. >> gerald ford, george h.w. bush, and little billy clinton.

>> i don't think mark liked the speech. >> let's try to be slightly dispassionate about it. [laughter] you have a whole host of problems in society. the liberal answer is to find it a government program that will fix id. state of the union address. the conservative approach is in what way is the government passed a regulation and taxation and corruptions and hindrances of all kinds holding back to this incredible engine of the private sector, which historically has provided unpresident -- unprecedented prosperity and liberty in america? that is the difference between the parties. rubio, if you look at the transcript -- i will not speak about the delivery. it was hot in there and he was obviously thursday. [laughter] the transcript was an excellent explanation of the conservative

argument that what is coming america is a sclerotic, obsolete hanging onto every regulation, every increase in taxation, i thought he did it well. the problem is, he should have done it in a studio somewhere well-prepared. >> colby? >> it was a "saturday night live" skit. he is going to go the way of paul ryan, these youthful looking guys who are boyish, and then they spew out that same conservative pablum that got them in trouble. >> he is talking about immigration -- >> but he didn't in that speech. >> according to "time" magazine, he got a voice now from his mother who said, "don't mess with the immigrants. they came here for the same reasons." >> that was a great anecdote and

nice touch, and i hope he listens to his mother more often. the speech can be boiled down to this -- i am not mitt romney. i was not born of privilege. >> but my views are pretty much the same. >> views of the same, not as well expressed. this is charles' idea of insightful rhetoric -- "our free enterprise economy is because of our problems. that is what the president believes," oakwood to marco rubio. that is just fantasy, that is balderdash. >> balderdash. >> it is, and you hear the same thing from paul ryan to it is there mantra. the problem is policy, policy, policy. if they could understand that, and they might get out of the whole they dug for themselves. >> and will let charles talk. >> it is not balderdash, it is

malecki. -- malarkey. you are exactly right, is the republican message without romney, and that is the problem the republicans had last year -- it plutocrat after a financial collapse, a guy who is a finance year. the wrong person delivering what i think is a message that in 2010, smaller government was a winning message. >> this is the small matter of the sequestration. access is scheduled to fall on the first of march. senate democrats came up with a $110 billion budget evenly divided between new taxes and spending cuts to head off sequester. will they be able to find any republicans to dance with? >> no, and republicans have presented in the house two ideas, two bills last year that would deal with it by redistributing the cuts so that defense is less hit that also have no dance partners. there is not going to be an

agreement. we will hit sequester on march 1, it will take effect, and after the fact, people will start working backwards and mitigating some of the effects. >> the only thing that probably works is pain. when all of the campaign contribute to both parties are stuck in the airport line for two hours, the pain will begin to be felt. it is an interesting thing, the rubio speech. republicans had the obama speech an hour and half or two hours before. it was in some ways the ship passing in the night with the obama speech. but the president did propose something on medicare with entitlements. there were things in the president's speech about reducing government costs. he threw out a bunch of new programs that don't have the chance of a snowball in hell.

>> but he said that none of this stuff will add a dime to the deficit. how can he make that claim? >> the state of the union -- you used to watch these things to hear what the president had to say. now you approach it with the idea, what else do they do to show disrespect to the president of the united states? it happened again this time. sitting up there in the gallery at the request of a republican is a guy named ted nugent, who famously said, " barack obama and hillary clinton --" ama- he's a piece of this is a family show. "i will make him stop on my machine gun." this guy is ther at the request

of the steve stockman of texas bank. what else will they do? >> apparently he behaved -- >> i thought one of the more interesting things about watching the state of the union was watching how uncomfortable john boehner looked behind him. and now, periodically -- >> boehner has an uncomfortable job. >> i think the president missed a great opportunity a couple of years ago. with the brouhaha in the supreme court, i'm going to ask you not to stand up. if we eliminated that from the state of the union, it would be over in 40 minutes. an think it has become artificial up and down. with the sequestration, we're talking about real hits.

head start for the most disadvantaged kids being cut, women and children on low income, health care plans being cut. >> i would like to improve on mark's suggestion about the state of the union, and we go all the way back to jefferson, who abolished its delivery and did it in writing, until woodrow wilson. for 100 years it was a piece of paper, which is what it should be. wilson, who did not have a lot of use for our constitution, made it into a theatrical event. [laughter] >> blocking chuck hagel. >> not a single nominee for secretary of defense in the history of our country has been filibustered. >> the second best valentine's president would allow sylvia and i to get the heck out of town. [laughter] >> leon panetta says he will

stay on the job until the nominee is sworn in to replace them before taking a well- deserved break, republicans in the senate held up the nomination of chuck hagel to be secretary of defense. one of the issues holding it up i guess is benghazi. benghazi, like the poor and the gospel of matthew, will always be with us, colby. [laughter] >> as a political issue, but they are beating a dead horse with this. you have to consider the politics of this thing. the senator from north carolina is up for reelection next year. >> lindsey graham. >> he will go against the president on everything, everything, everything. he famously said, "i don't trust susan rice over benghazi."

>> susan collins voted to move this thing forward, but she says she will vote against his nomination. susan collins -- >> that is party discipline. she did not say disciplined -- >> is she worried about a challenge? >> i don't think she is worried about a challenge. the leadership wants to stick it to obama, they if you chuck hagel as a heretic, and if the democrat had the same view as technical, which john kerry did, and he only had three votes against him -- >> on fox news, john mccain recalled that hagel was very rough on bush, said he was the worst president we ever had, that the surge in iraq was the worst mistake since vietnam, and that is why republicans are down on him. >> john mccain has been

shifting positions this week. this thing walks like a filibuster, quacks like a filibuster. it is the filibuster. i would like to point out a couple of the facts -- secretary of defense bill cohen, republican. secretary of defense of bob gates, republican. secretary of defense melvin laird, republican national. security adviser brent scowcroft, a republican. former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, colin powell, republican did all of them have endorsed chuck hagel. who lost benghazi -- next it will be lost china, who prpromoted and is from captain to major? joe mccarthy will find out about it. >> go ahead, charles. >> and have as long a list of endorsements as you want and

leave your lying eyes. -- believe your lying eyes. it is less about ideology or any thing is about competence. there's a democratic senator quoted after that disasters day of hearings in which hagel did not even understand what containment of iran and -- he said, "chuck hagel will not be bringing the potato salad to next week's to connect." -- next week's pettitte." he had a performance that was a total embarrassment. you talk about discipline among republicans? the discipline among democrats .s shocking and embarrasseing his performance was so bad that at the end he said, "don't worry, senators, i will not be a decision maker at all, don't worry about me."

here is a guy who wants to be secretary of defense who does not want to make decisions. it is the democrats who are embarrassed and no eight. >> i will tell you what is disciplined -- right wing talk radio, right wing websites and publications have gone after chuck hagel on some mythical friends of hamas supporting him. there is no friends of hamas. that is up and down the conservative network -- >> they have no shame at all. >> we need to take a spur to a break here. die --on't quit, they until now. >> they have to be more candid and honest about it. >> the catholic church has a global membership of 1.2 billion souls. it came as a shock this week to learn that the 85-year-old pope

benedick has decided to resign, mark. >> it absolutely shocked me, as a lifelong patpracticing an admittedly imperfect catholic. his predecessor having gone through a painful public death -- one of the critics of pope benedict said you don't come off the cross street is an act of enormous humility and honestly. >> how many of leaders give up power willingly? >> george washington is about the only one i can point to. it has not happened in 600 years, and you realize how vulnerable any to this institution is. the last time that happened was the center before columbus -- sentry before columbus. >> one of the reasons he decided to retire is that he was there

when this previous pope had this long and agonizing death, and when he read about him being wheeled down the corridor, you realize that he was tired and depressed and human, actually. >> colby. >> know when to hold them and know when to fold them. he made the right call. >> he has his critics -- >> i am standing on the outside of this one. i just don't know enough -- >> in a way, you could say that he is starting a new tradition of introducing term limits. >> one of the factors, as some suggested, he did joined twitter and it has been a disappointment for millions of people. >> last word. see you next week.

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last. siemens. answers. hardest talk. >> issue one. smarter, not bigger. a growing economy that creates good middle class jobs, that must be the north star that guides our efforts. it is our generation's task then to reignite the true engine of american economic growth, a rising thriving middle class. >> president obama delivered his fourth state of the union address tuesday. in attendance were senate and house members, six of the nine justices of the supreme court, the joint chiefs of staff, members of this cabinet and assorted dignitaries.